Grow your own… eggs!

I’ve been wanting to get some backyard chickens for a few years now, but there were other things needing to be done first. Now, I’m just about ready to plunge in, and I thought I’d share a post that a friend of mine wrote for me a few years ago. Chickens are good for gardens (they eat bugs! their poop is great fertilizer!), good for consuming kitchen scraps, and great for providing a steady source of protein (eggs!).

(Clockwise from top left corner 1.Teri(yaki) first day 2.Teri in her run 3.Teri molting 4.Mrs. Drysdale and me 5. Blondie 6.Freckles 7.Joan Jett)

“I first tasted farm-raised, free-range chicken eggs about 3 years ago. They were the most dense and delicious eggs I had ever put in my mouth. I tried them every way – fried, scrambled, souffled, boiled hard and soft. Almost immediately, I began to plot my chicken ownership. I tried to convince my boyfriend it would be a good idea to keep them at his house (it wasn’t) and I only had a 700 sq ft apartment with no yard, so it would be awhile before my dream was realized. This gave me a lot of time for R&D. What kind of chickens do I want? What do I feed them? Where do I keep them? How many eggs will they produce?

Almost 2 years to the day of tasting perfection, I was given my first hen and a small hen house (a dog house really) by a friend who was thinning her
flock. All of my planning and scheming had panned out!